Monthly Archives: January 2012

For everyone who’s been enjoying the Weekly Hit (& Miss) List, thank you for reading, commenting and supporting what we’re doing here at nearmintcomicshow.com. As you’ve probably noticed though, my weekly review column has been coming out with far less frequency of late.

As mentioned on our last episode, it’s teaching season again and I’m back at Southern New Hampshire University teaching animation and visual effects. The good news is I’m hard at work preparing the next generation of animators and mond-blowing special effects creators to bring you a lifetime of comic book properties on the big and small screen. The bad news is it’s left me with little time to produce a quality column each week. So rather than stress about it, and produce a sporadic column that’s not up to snuff, I’ve decided to suspend the Hit (& Miss) List for the time being in the hopes of a return to form this summer. Continue reading From Ben: Official Hit List Hiatus→

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Happy New Year! It’s the first show of 2012, but this episode is all about 2011. Join us as we honor the best comics, creators, characters and more in the 4th Annual Minty Awards! Hear what Ben, Josh and you the listener picked as the best of 2011. Find out who the biggest winners were. Listen as a favorite title is raised to the rafters of the Minty Hall of Fame. Gaze into the crystal ball with bold predictions for the year ahead.

All this, plus Ben schooling Thomas Vokoun, Josh’s week of movies, the New DC Logo discussed, and the films of P.J. Huot. It’s a fitting send-off for the year that was, and the perfect start to 2012.

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The Weekly Hit (and Miss) List is a rundown of the best and worst things I read this week regardless of their original publication date. It doesn’t have to be new – just new to me.

Happy New Year everyone and welcome back to the Hit List! Thanks for letting me take some time off to recharge, record a new episode and read some comics. It was much-needed, and now I’m back with a vengeance like Johnny Blaze – let’s get to it!

THE HITS

Invincible #86| Image | Robert Kirkman (w) Cory Walker (a)

If you had to wipe out all of Germany to prevent the Holocaust, could you do it? That’s the ethical dilema facing the newly-appointed leader of the Coalition of Planets, Allen the Alien in Invincible #86. “What would you do” scenarios like this are the makings of great comicbooks and this issue dishes it up in typical Kirkman fashion – with tons of face-punching and loads of gratuitous bloodshed. Original series artist, Cory Walker is pinch-hitting for Ryan Ottley and looking great doing it while Invincible – which could have taken a backseat to all the Walking Dead hoopla – is kicking ass heading into 2012.

Uncanny X-Force #19| Marvel | Rick Remender (w) Robbi Rodriguez (a)

I know I’m in the minority here, but I’m one of the few people who didn’t love the ending of the 8-part Dark Angel Saga. I think it was a brilliant concept and had some great moments, but the ending was a little too “crushing-your-head-with-mind-bending-science-fiction” for my tastes. That said, issue #19 was an epilogue of sorts that did a nice job of both grounding the story and giving it some context within the rest of the X-Men universe. And if you’re going to follow up Jerome Opeña on art, you better come correct. Robbie Rodriguez is more than up to the the task, and Dean White’s colors kept a consistent feel despite the change in pencils. If I had any qualms about continuing with Uncanny X-Force, this issue put them aside.

Superior #1-6| Icon | Mark Millar (w) Leinil Yu (a)

If you didn’t listen to the last episode, shame on you. If you did, let me just say “Josh was right” and leave it at that. Can’t wait to see how this Millarworld mini-series wraps up next month!

THE MISSES

Voltron #1 | Dynamite | Brandon Thomas (w) Ariel Padilla (a)

THE GOOD: within the first 2 pages, we get Voltron throwing down against a giant kaiju monster.
THE BAD: pretty much everything else.
There’s a decent amount of action in this first issue but the corporate/political espionage backstory is a total snooze. Artist, Ariel Padilla has clearly attended the Chris Bachalo school of bizarre and confusing camera angles but his lines lack any of the style and soul of Bachalo’s work. The colors are bland and full of overly rendered airbrush effects. Everything looks shiny for no reason and in a lot of cases the work looks unfinished. Overall, this book did nothing to excite me, leaning too heavily on nostalgia to establish the characters which are otherwise sterile and generic. As a final nitpick, some genius decided to match the uniform colors of the “drivers” (they don’t actually “drive” – Voltron now seems to be a remote controlled drone of some sort … I know, don’t get me started) to the colors of the lions, robbing Voltron of the bizarre black-lion-driver-is-red-red-is-blue-and-blue-is-pink-for-some-reason charm that made it one of the most beloved poorly-translated wacky Japanese imports of our childhood.

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The 4th Minty Awards are just around the corner in which we recap the greatest comics, creators and so forth of the past year. We’ll be recording the Minty Awards show in mid-late January and we want YOUR input. Ben and Josh will name their own winners for best writer, best ongoing series, ‘oh-shit’ moment of the year and more but we want to hear from the listeners as well Give us your winners in some or all of the categories and we’ll include them in the show.

PLUS, we’ll select one response at random and that person will win a comics prize pack containing autographed comics, packing peanuts and more. So not only will you contribute to the show and give props to your favorite comics, but you could score yourself some cool swag in the process – what are you waiting for?!

The IndustryComic Movie of the Year
Comic TV Show of the Year
Publisher of the Year
Biggest Disappointment of the Year
*Oh-Shit Moment of the Year
*Pleasant Surprise of the Year
*Bold Prediction for 2012

The CharactersHero of the Year
Villain of the Year
Team of the Year
Non-Superhero Character of the Year

The CreatorsBest Artist (or Art Team)
Best Writer

The BooksBest Cover
Best Marvel Title
Best DC Title
Best Creator-Owned Title
Best Graphic Novel and/or Collected Edition
Best Single Issue
Best New Series (Rookie of the Year)
Best Mini-Series
Best Ongoing Series